My brother-in-law put a pool in his backyard three summers ago. Beautiful gunite pool, stamped concrete deck, the whole nine yards. First thing he did after the concrete cured was call an electrician about landscape lighting around the pool area. The electrician quoted him $4,200 to run low-voltage wiring around the pool deck, install a transformer, and mount fixtures.
Four thousand two hundred dollars. For lights around a pool.
I told him he was insane and that solar lights would do 90% of what he wanted for about $150. He was skeptical. Pool owners usually are, because there’s this assumption that anything near water needs to be professional-grade, hardwired, and expensive. That’s true for the pump and the heater. It’s not true for ambient lighting.
Here’s the thing that nobody seems to talk about: solar lights are actually safer around pools than wired lights. No electricity near water. No GFCI outlets to worry about. No buried cables that a future landscaping project could cut through. The lights are completely self-contained. The only thing running through them is DC power from a small battery, and the voltage is so low it couldn’t hurt you if you tried.
I helped my brother-in-law set up solar lights around his pool that summer. Three years later, most of them are still working, the pool area looks great at night, and he spent roughly $180 instead of $4,200. Here’s what we learned.
The Safety Question: Why Solar Actually Wins Near Water
Let me get this out of the way first, because it’s the thing everyone worries about.
Water and electricity are a dangerous combination. That’s why pool pumps, heaters, and underwater lights require GFCI (ground-fault circuit interrupter) protection, specialized bonding, and strict code compliance. If something goes wrong with a wired light near a pool, the consequences can be fatal. I’m not exaggerating. People die from electrocution in pools every year, usually because of faulty wiring or degraded electrical components.
Solar lights eliminate this risk entirely. There’s no connection to your home’s electrical system. No AC voltage running through cables near the water. The light generates its own power from the sun, stores it in a small battery (typically 3.2V to 3.7V DC), and uses it to power an LED. Even if a solar light fell into the pool, the worst that would happen is the light would break. No shock hazard. No electrocution risk.
This is why solar lighting around pools has gotten so popular. It’s not just about cost. It’s about eliminating a category of risk that wired lighting will always carry, no matter how well-installed it is.
That said, solar lights near pools have their own set of challenges. They’re not perfect. But the problems they have are annoying, not dangerous. And that’s a trade I’ll take every time.
Pool Deck Lighting: The Foundation
The pool deck is where you need the most light. People are walking around in wet feet, possibly carrying drinks, possibly wearing sandals that don’t grip well. You need enough light to see where you’re walking and identify the edge of the pool.
Solar path lights along the deck edge. This is the most common approach and it works well. Place solar path lights every 6-8 feet along the deck, set back about 18-24 inches from the pool edge. You want them close enough to illuminate the coping (the pool edge) but not so close that someone could kick them into the water while walking.
The key spec here is brightness. Most cheap solar path lights produce 10-15 lumens, which is enough to mark the path but not enough to actually light the deck surface. For a pool area, you want at least 50-80 lumens per light. This is not the place for the $2 path lights from a 12-pack. Spend a bit more on lights that actually throw usable light onto the walking surface.
We used solar path lights with 80 lumen output, spaced 7 feet apart along the long side of the pool. The light pattern creates overlapping pools of warm white light that cover the entire deck width. You can see the coping clearly, you can see the deck surface, and you can see where the grass starts.
Solar wall lights on nearby structures. If you have a pool house, a fence, or a retaining wall near the pool, solar wall lights mounted on these structures provide broader area lighting than path lights alone. We mounted two solar wall lights (150 lumens each) on the fence at opposite corners of the pool area. These cast a wider, softer light that fills in the gaps between the path lights.
Position wall lights at about 7-8 feet high. This gets the light above head level (so it doesn’t shine in anyone’s eyes) and covers a wider area. Motion sensor wall lights are a good choice here — they stay off when the pool area is empty, which saves battery, and they snap on when someone walks out to the pool at night.
The Water Line: What Works and What Doesn’t
People always ask if they can put solar lights in the pool or floating on the surface. The short answer: floating solar lights exist, but they’re mostly novelty items. Don’t expect them to light your pool.
Floating solar pool lights are disc-shaped lights that float on the water surface. The solar panel is on top, facing the sky, and the LED shines downward into the water. They charge during the day and glow at night. The effect is actually pretty cool — the water glows from within, creating an ambiance that’s hard to get any other way.
But here’s the reality. These lights produce maybe 20-40 lumens each. A typical pool is 15×30 feet and holds 15,000+ gallons of water. Two or three floating lights are not going to illuminate the entire pool. They create localized glow spots that look neat but don’t provide functional lighting. If you want the “glowing pool” effect, you need 6-8 floating lights, and at $15-25 each, that adds up.
They also tend to drift. Pool pumps create currents, and floating lights end up clustered in one corner of the pool within an hour. Some models come with tethering anchors to keep them in place, but the tethers are usually too short and the lights end up bumping into each other.
My brother-in-law bought four floating lights. He used them for exactly one summer. Two of them took on water and sank. One got sucked into the skimmer and the pump chewed it up. The fourth survived but was so dim he stopped bothering to put it in the pool. His words: “They looked great on the internet and pointless in real life.”
Underwater solar lights are another option, but I’d skip them entirely. The solar panel can’t be underwater (it needs sun), so these lights have a panel that sits above the water line with the LED submerged. The cable connecting them is usually not well-sealed, and chlorinated pool water degrades the housing within months. They’re not worth the money.
Landscape Lighting Beyond the Deck
The area around the pool — the grass, the garden beds, the trees — is where solar lights really shine (pun intended). This is where you create the atmosphere that makes a pool area feel like a resort rather than a concrete box full of water.
Solar spotlights on trees and architectural features. If you have trees near the pool, uplighting them with solar spotlights creates a dramatic backdrop. The light hits the trunk and lower branches from below, casting interesting shadows against the night sky. It makes the pool area feel enclosed and intimate, like the trees are leaning in to watch.
Use solar spotlights with 100-200 lumens, placed 3-5 feet from the tree trunk, angled upward at about 30-45 degrees. One spotlight per tree is enough for smaller trees (under 20 feet). For larger trees, use two spotlights from different angles to avoid a single harsh beam.
Solar ground lights in garden beds near the pool. Low-profile solar ground lights tucked into planting beds around the pool deck create a soft, layered glow that defines the landscape without competing with the deck lighting. These are accent lights, not task lights. They mark the edge of garden beds and highlight plants without casting harsh shadows.
Solar string lights overhead. If you have a pergola, shade structure, or even just two sturdy trees near the pool, solar string lights draped overhead create the classic “party atmosphere” that everyone wants. Warm white fairy lights or Edison-style bulbs (both available in solar versions) work equally well. The key is getting them high enough that nobody can reach them from the pool — wet hands grabbing string lights is a recipe for pulling the whole string down.
My brother-in-law ran solar string lights between his pool house and a large oak tree, about 10 feet above the deck. They cast a warm, even glow over the entire seating area. Total cost: $35 for 48 feet of lights. It’s the single highest-impact lighting element in the whole setup, and it was the cheapest.
The Chlorine Problem Nobody Warns You About
Here’s something that bit us: pool chemicals destroy solar lights faster than normal weather.
Chlorinated water splashes out of the pool during use. It lands on nearby lights, sits on the solar panels, and slowly degrades the plastic housing and the panel surface. Over a season or two, the panels get cloudy and hazy from chemical exposure, which reduces charging efficiency. The housings get brittle and crack.
This isn’t a problem for lights that are 10+ feet from the pool. But for lights mounted on the pool deck or within splash range, it’s a real issue. My brother-in-law lost three path lights in two seasons to chlorine degradation. The panels clouded over and the lights stopped charging effectively, even though the LEDs and batteries were fine.
The fix: Wipe down lights near the pool with fresh water every couple of weeks during pool season. A quick spray with the garden hose is enough to rinse off chlorine residue. Don’t use pool water — that defeats the purpose. Also, look for lights with glass panel covers rather than plastic. Glass is more resistant to chlorine degradation and stays clear longer.
If you have lights that are already cloudy from chlorine, you can sometimes restore them with a plastic polish or a baking soda paste. Rub it on the panel with a soft cloth, rinse thoroughly, and the panel may regain some clarity. It’s not a permanent fix, but it can extend the life of a light by another season.
Placement Rules I Learned the Hard Way
Don’t put lights where people will step. This sounds obvious, but pool decks get crowded. Path lights that seem well-placed at 2 PM become obstacles at 9 PM when people are walking around with drinks. Keep lights at least 18 inches back from the walking path. If the deck is narrow, skip path lights and use wall lights instead.
Don’t put lights where they’ll get splashed. Splashing is different from rain. Rain comes from above and hits the top of the light. Pool splash comes from the side and hits the lens, the battery compartment, and any seams in the housing. Lights that survive rain fine can fail from repeated pool splash. Keep path lights at least 3 feet from the pool edge.
Mind the pump timer. If your pool pump runs on a timer (most do), it usually runs during the day. This is fine for solar lights — the pump doesn’t affect them. But if your pump runs at night (some people do this for off-peak electricity rates), the water movement can create splashing that hits nearby lights all night. Either move the lights further from the pool or adjust the pump schedule.
Consider the leaf situation. Pools near trees collect leaves. Leaves also land on solar lights, covering the panels. If your pool area has overhanging trees, you’ll need to brush leaves off the light panels regularly, same as you brush them out of the pool. A leaf-covered panel charges at maybe 20% efficiency.
What I’d Install If I Were Starting From Scratch
If I were building a pool lighting setup from scratch today, here’s what I’d do:
Start with the overhead string lights. This is the biggest visual impact for the least money. Solar string lights between two anchor points, 10+ feet up, warm white. $35-50. This alone transforms the pool area at night.
Add path lights along the long side of the deck, 7-foot spacing, 50+ lumens each, set back 2 feet from the pool edge. $60-100 for a set of 8. Skip the short sides of the pool — they usually get enough spillover light from the long sides.
Put two motion-sensor wall lights on the nearest structure (fence, pool house, garage). These provide security lighting and fill in the dark corners. $25-40 each.
Add solar spotlights on any trees within 15 feet of the pool. One per tree, 100+ lumens, angled up. $20-30 each.
Skip the floating lights. They’re not worth the hassle. If you really want the glowing water effect, save up for a proper LED pool light that replaces your existing return jet fitting. That’s a wired install but it’s the only way to get real underwater illumination.
Total budget: about $200-250 for a complete pool area lighting setup. Compare that to $4,200 for wired low-voltage, and you can see why solar makes sense for most pool owners. The lighting won’t be as bright or as consistent as a professional wired system, but it’ll be 80% as good for 5% of the cost. And you can install it yourself in an afternoon.
The One Thing I’d Never Do
Never use wired landscape lighting within 5 feet of the pool edge. I don’t care what the electrician says. I don’t care if it’s GFCI-protected and bonded and up to code. The risk/reward ratio is wrong. If a wired light fails near the pool, the consequence is potentially fatal. If a solar light fails near the pool, the consequence is a dark spot.
Use solar for everything within the pool’s splash zone. Save wired lighting for areas that are well away from the water — the front yard, the side garden, the driveway. Around the pool, solar is the safer choice, and that’s not a marketing claim. That’s just physics.
